


who am i?

by takethebreadsticksandRUN



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Mostly Canon Compliant, accepting herself as a QUEEN, bc i can so hah, cw michael is destroyed but it's not graphic, helen character study, helen is insane and we love her, i took minor liberties with canon, set in season 3 ish maybe?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:47:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24887863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/takethebreadsticksandRUN/pseuds/takethebreadsticksandRUN
Summary: The Archivist turned and looked at her. She could feel his Eyes staring, unblinking in her presence. “Who are you?” His voice was technicolor, layered with strings that tugged at her throat and limbs.I’m Helen! she wanted to shout. Helen Richardson. You know me, I came here, then He took me there and…But she wasn’t sure if that was true. She wanted it to be true. But He was still there, inside her mind, inside her body, inside the walls she wandered- She couldn’t get rid of him.ORThe entity formerly known as Helen Richardson has an identity crisis.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	who am i?

**Author's Note:**

> OHMYWORD I LOVE HELEN SO MUCH  
> she is so fun to write and mess around with. like yes? give me queen? please? anyways please let me know what y'all think, comments/kudos/bookmarks f e e d m y s o u l  
> xxx

The Archivist turned and looked at her. She could feel his Eyes staring, unblinking in her presence. “Who are you?” His voice was technicolor, layered with strings that tugged at her throat and limbs.

_I’m Helen!_ she wanted to shout. _Helen Richardson. You know me, I came here, then He took me there and…_

But she wasn’t sure if that was true. She wanted it to be true. But He was still there, inside her mind, inside her body, inside the walls she wandered- She couldn’t get rid of him.

So instead of answering, she smiled. And that scared Jon more than any answer she could have given.

“What are you?”

Helen twirled a strand of her curly hair around her finger, considering. _What am I? Who am I?_ “Instead of asking pointless questions, Archivist,” she laughed, “There is a larger one to be answered.”

A flicker of fear crossed his face. “What is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know, but it’s _there_. Can’t you feel it? Can’t you taste the question on your tongue when you speak, hear it whisper in your ear as you fall asleep, watch it curl on your floor in shifting patterns that never resolve?”

He shook his head _no_.

“Ah, that’s too bad-“ Static was coming from somewhere. Was it from him? He certainly had the look of something that would make that sound. Helen saw triangles chasing around the doorways of his mind, blocking her entrance. _Or,_ she mused, _keeping something in_. “Come find me when you know the answer!”

“I don- how?” he closed all his eyes except one, the one on the back of his right hand. It blinked at her indolently, it’s color shifting.

She laughed again, fading and overlapping with reality. “I am the doorway, Archivist. Find me there.” Helen stepped backward, falling with an absurd grace into the open door in the floor.

It closed behind her with a creak no one would hear.

In the hallways, He was there. In every twist and turn, the lines in the floor, the way none of the light switches worked, He watched her. _I’m right here,_ He seemed to whisper, _I’m watching you and you will always be mine._

Was that who she was? Just another game piece, another pebble to be skipped across the pond then left to sink?

Before she opened that door, the first door, when she was Helen Richardson, she liked to run. She would run and none of her problems could catch up to her, not then. So she ran. Through the doors that twisted as she crossed the threshold, down halls that should be empty but were full of quiet dread, ran circles in her mind while her feet bled.

But drowning her demons in sweat and blood and tears no longer worked. How can it, when the monster was the thing inside your bones?

_Who are you?_ The walls shaped themselves into the question as she passed. _The question_.

_Who are you?_ The ceiling, brought low by the weight of her own ignorance, pressed against her feeble attempts to hold it up, crumbling lower, ever lower, towards her body.

_Who are you?_ Helen could not hear herself over the silence, but the echoes of questions unasked and answers she did not need bounced back to her.

_Who are you?_ She could hear His laughter, a headache that never truly left her, not in this place.

Bloody footprints vanished into the carpet, swallowed by a mouth hungry for madness. The world before had never made sense, asking for things she could never give. Now, Helen was unsure of everything.

A yellow door, painted with angular ovals, opened above her. A small boy fell through it. The floor where he landed twisted, reaching up and seizing his ankles. He turned his small face to her, pleading. Eager, the ground continued to swallow him.

”Stop.” Her voice was raw, not from salt but from the new way her body twisted in on itself. Around her, the walls shifted from navy blue to blood red to forest green to-

“Help me,” the child whimpered.

Helen snapped her long fingers sharply. The boy jumped to his feet, walking backward slowly. _Away from her_. She sighed, opening a new door behind him with a click of her tongue. “Go,” she said, waving him towards it. He scampered back into the world of the living, back to the place where people knew who they were but ignored their names.

_Why did you let him go?_ The hall pressed in on her, malicious. His face lived beneath the wallpaper, pulsing with a life impossible. _He was your meal, my pet_.

“I’m not your pet,” she murmured, refusing to be moved. Not even when her broad shoulders touched the sides of the hallway, squeezing.

_Then who are you?_ He purred, sensing her indecision. Helen pushed against the collapsing borders of her mind. _I am…_

But she did not know.

She screamed, loud and high and warbling with the interference of a thousand radios. She screamed until the floors stopped moving, the hallways bending to her will. She screamed, and as her throat tore to shreds windows popped into existence, showing her a life she once had.

She could have opened any door, run away from the voice in the walls, but instead, Helen screamed.

_You fool_ , He whispered. _Do you think you can drown me out? We are not separate people. Accept that. You are weak, unbending. Brittle._

But she did not feel weak. Her aching throat reminded her, _yes, you have a voice. Use it._ The power one gains when you remember to sing your way through silence is enough to collapse the stars themselves. “You know, Michael-“ Her voice caught on the name. _His_ name. It poisoned the air she breathed, sick and twisted syllables. “I am not who you think I am.” She was quiet now, resolute. “Wh-who you want me to be. I will not play your silly games any longer; you know who I was.”

_You fancied yourself a fighter._

“No. But I was not some pawn-“ She reached out, fingers elongating, and tore at the wallpaper. “You can use-“ He shrieked as she ripped him out of the hall, forcing him _away_. “To serve-“ With a shout, the corridors around her _changed_ , expelling everything that had once been Him. “Our _master_.” Helen shivered at the word, feeling strengthened by the acceptance.

Michael, the shreds of him that were left, twisted into an infinitesimally small point and vanished, leaving behind nothing but a question: _Who are you?_

She laughed, a high melody of insanity and color. She blinked, her perception of the place shifting- her domain, her kingdom, shifting into a world of light and shadow, impossible windows, a twisting staircase into the heart of the unknown.

“I am Helen Richardson,” she said, her voice broken glass and strawberry cream. She climbed through doors, landing on a ground that shifted with every step. A palpable presence spiraled sharply around her, cracked like the mirrors of her realm.


End file.
